Efforts Toward Peaceful Cooperation

In 1955, the U.S. Government consolidated its various
foreign-aid programs, including what remained of the Marshall Plan for Europe, into a permanent International Cooperation
Administration. Two years later, the U.S. created the
Development Loan Fund to help provide developing areas with the
capital needed to finance transportation, power, industry,
rivervalley development, irrigation, and other foundations for
economic growth. By the end of 1960, the Fund had made some 183
loans to 49 countries totalling nearly $2,000 million. In addition,
between 1954 and 1960, the U.S. distributed food worth more
than $10,000 million to needy countries. About half this food
was an outright gift to avert famine in such countries as Pakistan,
Nepal, Jordan, Haiti, and Ghana. The other half was sold for
foreign currencies, which could then be lent back to the recipient
countries at low or no interest for their economic development
projects.

Hopes for peaceful cooperation between the Communist
and non-Communist powers were raised by the 1955 Geneva
"summit conference," but the American, Soviet, British, and
French heads of state failed to agree on methods of achieving
either disarmament or the reunification of Germany. To
minimize the dangers of surprise attack and to halt arms
development, President Eisenhower proposed that the Soviet Union and
the United States exchange blueprints of their military
establishments and permit mutual aerial observation of military
installations. The Soviet leaders rejected this plan as an invasion of
national sovereignty. Nevertheless, the Geneva meeting did
produce agreements providing that Soviet technicians, intellectuals,
and performing artists would tour the U.S. while their American
counterparts visited the Soviet Union.